The present disclosure relates to a polymer element such as a polymer actuator element or a polymer sensor element, and an electronic device, a camera module, and an imaging apparatus which use the polymer element.
In recent years, for example, remarkable progress was made in terms of increasing the functionality of portable electronic devices such as mobile phones, personal computers (PC), or personal digital assistants (PDA) and portable electronic devices which are provided with an imaging function by being mounted with a camera module are common. In such portable electronic devices, focusing or zooming is performed by moving a lens inside the camera module in the optical axis direction of the lens.
In the related art, methods for moving a lens inside a camera module using a voice coil motor, a stepping motor, or the like as a driving section are common. On the other hand, recently, from the point of view of miniaturization, portable electronic devices which use a predetermined actuator element as a driving section have been developed. Examples of such actuator elements include a polymer actuator element. The polymer actuator element interposes an ion conductive polymer layer (simply referred to below as a polymer layer), for example, between a pair of electrode layers. For example, the polymer layer includes water, an ionic liquid, or a high boiling point organic solvent. In such a polymer actuator element, by applying an electric field between the pair of electrode layers, ions move in the polymer layer and displacement is generated. For this reason, the operating characteristics of the polymer actuator element such as displacement amount, response speed, and the like greatly depend on the conduction environment of the ions. Thus, apart from being used as a polymer actuator element, the polymer element may also be used as a polymer sensor element, an electric double layer capacitor, a secondary battery, or the like.
For example, a porous carbon material may be used for the electrode layer of a polymer element (for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2010-93954 and the like). A method which, for example, focuses on a specific surface area of the porous carbon material in such a polymer element and improves the characteristics thereof has been examined.